


Tea In The TARDIS: A Pre-Regeneration Story

by ScottV_25or6to4



Category: Doctor Who (1963), Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-25
Updated: 2017-12-25
Packaged: 2019-02-20 07:20:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,556
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13141776
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ScottV_25or6to4/pseuds/ScottV_25or6to4
Summary: No, this isn't my promised 4th Chapter of the "Lost Oswalds" series. That is still to come, hopefully by mid-January. I want to do it right, so I am not rushing it. Episode 9B4: Keeper Of The Sigma Gate (working title) is on its way!For now, I submit a short pre-regeneration story, one in which I drop a major plot hint to come, in the aforementioned KOTSG, while allowing The Twelfth Doctor a final meeting with the living Clara Oswald. You'll know what I mean by those last three words if you have bothered to read Episode 9B3: The Impossible Child.





	Tea In The TARDIS: A Pre-Regeneration Story

Tea In The TARDIS: A Pre-Regeneration Story

The Doctor awakes. His head pounding; vision blurry. Unlocking frozen time side by side with his First incarnation, he didn’t realize how fast frozen moments would snap back into action. Action, in this case being a World War I battlefield. An explosion, followed by a whack in the head from the stock of a soldier’s rifle, conspired to momentarily rob Twelve of consciousness, and maybe a little pride. He remembers staggering to his TARDIS door, key in hand, then…

The scent of hibiscus and bergamot. His vision clears. A cuppa tea, steaming hot, sits on the small table in front of him. That’s the reading table from his 1960s UNIT office, he thinks. What’s it doing in the console room? 

“Superheated infusion of free radicals and tannin. Just the thing for rebooting the synapses.”

“No, no, no, it’s ‘healing the synapses.’ I was there.” He finally looks up. “Oh. Hello!”

“Then why do I remember it differently?” The question morphs into a smile. “Hello, Doctor.” The console room seems brighter. 

“I don’t know.” He is warmed by her smile. “How long has it been, Clara Oswald?”

“More than fifteen years. Thank you, Doctor, for that.”

The Doctor only then notices the familiar bowtie around her neck, the cuppa in Clara’s hand as she takes a long sip and paces. He also notices the blue and white top under her coat, and suddenly feels sad. She looks up at the time rotor, lost in a memory. “How long has it been for you?”

“About a century, I think, since last I saw you.” He looks over at his guitar. “I wrote a song about it.”

“Called?”

“I Forget.”

“Mm. Didn’t work out, then?”

“No, that’s what I called it. I Forget.”

“Oh.” She takes another sip. “So how long did it take you to remember – or, is that still a work in progress?”

“Mostly I remember, but I do wonder sometimes about the accuracy. How much is real, how much is just me filling in the blanks. As for when it came back: it was about ten years after. I found my diary. Actually, another companion found it.”

“I knew that would work! You scrambled your memory once before, and I dug up your diary, and voila! Memory restored! So where was it?” 

"In my library, hidden amongst some TARDIS manuals.”

Clara snorts, “Filed under ‘irretrievably lost’, then!”

“Now wait, young lady!” He stops. “How did you get in here?”

Clara holds up the TARDIS key on a chain from under her collar. She sighs. “When he finally got around to it, an old friend gave me the key to his time machine.” She points to the cuppa on the table. “Not changing the subject, Doctor, but I did make you a cuppa.”

“Yes. Yes, you did. Never refuse a cuppa tea.” He looks off in the distance as he takes a long sip. “Hmm. Tea in the Sahara.”

“A Police song, yes. What about it?”

“No, no, no. I was wondering aloud if you and I ever had tea in the Sahara?”

“Sort of. We had tea in the desert, but it was Mars. I remember the tea took away the chill.”

“You see that’s the thing. The memories are there, but it’s the details I wonder about.” 

“Sorry about that.”

“Don’t apologize, Clara. The neural block was my idea. You just did what I would do.” The Doctor catches Clara wiping her eye. “Clara, what is it?”

Clara puts the cup down, looks around the console room, not looking The Doctor in the face. “I wanted so much to be like you, for you to be proud of me.” She swallows. “I wanted…” She waves away the thought.

“What happened?”

“Mostly, I travelled. Saw amazing places, encountered so many different beings. Got stuck for while… more than once. I even helped out, where I could.” Another tear. “But, there were other times, one recently, when things didn’t go so well.”

“When you found out what it’s really like to be me.” She nods. He stands up, touches her shoulder. Eyes meet in mutual pain. “Clara.” They embrace.

“I wanted to be worthy of your gift.”

“I never doubted you for a moment! Remember Akhaten, the leaf and your mum’s ring? Pleading for the world with Skaldak on that Soviet sub? Rigsy and the train station in Bristol? Ashildr and the Myre? All those times, Clara, I knew you’d make a fine Doctor. That doesn’t mean you would always win.”

“But what happened recently… I know involves the rules of time, and my extraction from the trap street.”

The trap street: the one memory of Clara The Doctor wishes more than anything he could forget. All the recent events – frozen moments scattered across space-time – he knows tie back to a stolen moment that must be restored to its rightful place. But didn’t he and his former self just resolve this?

FLASHBACK: The Glass Cube

The two Doctors wander the snowfields of Antarctica, looking for more victims of the glass people. Something catches the First Doctor’s eye. He turns, walks over to have a closer look.

“Here’s another one.”

Twelve seems annoyed at his predecessor’s curiosity. He turns. “Well, I’m sure if we keep looking for more, we’ll find more, and yet more still. Your curiosity is truly admirable, but it won’t help us help them.”

“This one has a TARDIS key around her neck. Aren’t you even a little curious about that?”

“What?” Twelve runs over, stops and stares. In front of them both, an old friend. “Clara!”

“Oh, you know this one, eh? And now, you’re curious, too!”

“Shut up!” Twelve runs his hand down the side of the cube containing Clara Oswald. His look: despair.

“The TARDIS key suggests time lord, yet I’m not sensing it. You seem to know her. Is she a comp-“

“A companion, yes, she was. Long time ago.”

“The look on your face! I’d say you’d seen a ghost!”

“In a way, she is.”

“How so?”

“Like everyone else here, she is suspended in the moment before her death. But Clara wasn’t wearing that coat before she died. The last time I saw her, in fact, she wasn’t dressed like this at all.”

“But why does that matter?”

“Because I extracted Clara Oswald from her timeline the moment before she died.” 

“You fool! Why would you do that?”

I wanted to give her more time…” Twelve’s voice trails off.

“Then it’s you. You, my future self, are probably responsible for all of this. The universe is freezing to death because… what? You developed a sentimental attachment?”

“Yes. Yes, if you must know. Just like I developed a ‘sentimental attachment’ to the Lord President’s daughter.”

Now, it’s the First Doctor’s turn to be embarrassed, though he tries hard not to show it.

“Oh, and it gets better! I stole a TARDIS so Clara could run away.”

“But she’s not a time lord.”

“I taught Clara the basics. (mumbling) I’m sure she then read the manual. She probably knows how to fly a TARDIS better than us by now.”

“But you know that you can’t extract a person indefinitely from their death. That’s a fixed event in time.”

“No, but it can be bent.”

“Why? I demand to know why – why you would risk the future of the whole universe for a sentimental attachment to one human female.”

“Clara Oswald saved my life more times than I can count. In one particular occasion, she saved my conscience, my… soul. She reminded me why I chose ‘The Doctor’ for my name, what that should mean. Then, one awful night, she saved a mutual friend from a quantum shade by taking the chrono-locked tattoo from him. Clara died in agony, helping a friend used by the Time Lords used to lure and entrap me, all because they were afraid of an old prophesy coming true.”

“Which prophesy?”

“The Hybrid.”

“The Hybrid. Did this prophesy come true?”

“No, but their fear of it lead to Clara’s death. Their fear of the Hybrid almost turned me into the Hybrid. And who saved me yet again?” Twelve looks again into the cube. “From the way she’s dressed, I’m guessing Clara on her way back to Gallifrey.”

“To the extraction chamber?”

“Probably, yes.” 

“Then we should help her do so.”

Twelve stares at Clara’s frozen expression. Is it resolve? Sadness? Both? “I wish she could tell me all the times and places she’s been. At least then I’d know her adventure was worth the risk.”

“Whether or not you believe it was worth the risk, your friend’s adventure must end, now.”

“Ah, yes, the detachment of a time lord. I figure it was that which made me want most to run away from home. What do you think?”

“That detachment you deride protects all of time and space from chaos. Sentimental attachments cannot override the rules of the universe.”

“And those sentimental attachments you deride: is that why we still haven’t returned to visit Susan? When I was you, I’d say I kept my promises. To that I can confidently say it isn’t so.” 

That revelation seems to shake the First Doctor to the core. Twelve, remembering how it affected him, pleads with his former self, “I just want to talk to her. I know she must return to the trap street. She knows it, too. Let’s find a way together to fix this. All I ask for is a few moments with my friend.”

BACK TO THE TEA

He tries to change the subject. “And what became of Ashildr?”

“We parted a few years ago. She wanted a ‘normal’ life, and a Myre surgeon offered to remove the repair chip. She started to age – rapidly, years’ worth in just weeks. She wanted to die among great artists, so I took her Paris in 1908.” Another sip. “I’m sure she had fun.”

“So you’ve traveled alone, then, these last few years? Or have you had other companions?”

“A little of both.” Clara looks away. “Anyway, I’ve been on this farewell tour, and I’ve been trying to catch up with you. You don’t make it easy.”

“Should I take that as a compliment?” She nods, smiles. Then he turns serious. “‘Farewell tour’?”

“Don’t play dumb, Doctor. We both know my little adventure has to end. Time has to heal, and we both know how that works. I’m ready, now. Ready I’ll ever be.”

“Clara.” The Doctor holds Clara’s left hand. Looking at it, a flash of two memories:  


Christmas Day, 2005: holding out his right hand to Rose Tyler. Hesitantly at first, she reaches out with her left. The ring on her left middle finger, the same as:  
Spring, 2013, Ahkaten. Holding open his right hand, into which Clara Oswald enthusiastically plops her left. And there it is: the same ring! 

He says “I’ve only noticed, just now, that ring.”

“Yeah?”

“You wear it on your left middle finger, same design, too. Just like…”

“Just like?”

“Just like… Rose.” He looks guilty at the mention of her name.

“I’m not offended. Rather the opposite. A special memory, then?”

“Yeah, I guess you could say that. So where have you been on this… tour?”

“Mostly revisiting a few of my favourite times and places. 18th Century England. Ancient Egypt. Taraxalotus before the Time War. That garden planet we got kicked out of. By the way, you can go back now.”  
The Doctor looks relieved. 

“Ahkaten, too. I was just there.”

“You were?”

“Yeah.” Clara bites her lip, lost in another thought.

“Your first extraterrestrial adventure, wasn’t it?” She nods.

“Went and saw my Gran, too. Think I gave her a fright, ‘cause she noticed my hair was a different length, and she would’ve only seen me days before. Didn’t think of that.”

“I’ve done that sort of thing, more than a few times. It’s funny, though: in all our travels, Clara, I’m kind of surprised we haven’t run into each other along the way.”

“Well, I have run into you, Doctor. One of your future selves. She was nice.”

“And I’m not? Hold on. ‘She’ was nice?”

“Uh-huh. You’ll like being her.”

“So I’m a ‘she’ in the future, then?”

“Don’t think she was the first, either.” 

“But how’d you know she was me?”

“No one can mistake your personality, Doctor. Or your kindness. Especially your kindness.” 

Clara reaches up and embraces her ancient friend. She feels something strange. Pushing away, she sees it: regeneration energy, emanating from her friend’s hands. “Doctor?”  


He nods. “Oxygen starvation, to save a friend.”

“A companion?”

“A companion, yes. Bill. You’d like her.” He looks at his hands, regeneration energy receding. “I’ve been fighting it. Don’t really know why. Maybe I’ve been waiting for a special moment.”

“I guess, in a way, then, it’s the end of the road for both of us.”

“Clara…”

“A very wise person told me recently death is just atoms re-arranged. Same atoms, different phase. Or, to put it another way: same soul, different face.”

“But you’re not a time lord, Clara.”

“No, but I’m done with the wandering. Time for someone new.” The Doctor can’t help an inappropriate giggle. Clara is mystified. “Doctor?”

“I never realized just how much I missed your Lancashire accent. The way you pronounce your soft ‘U’s.” He turns away, wipes an eye. “Sorry.”

She reaches out, grabs his coat by a pocket. For a long moment, they just look at each other, tears in their eyes. Clara speaks first. “I can stay, if you like. I won’t be afraid this time.”

The Doctor shakes his head. “Thank you, friend, but… I need to do this alone.” She nods. He takes her hands. “Thank you, Clara Oswald, for the tea. For being my friend.”

“Thank you, Doctor, for the travel, for the gift… of time.” A peck on his cheek. Clara walks up to the door, turns back and says, “Rest now, my Doctor. Rest now, and be ready to run… and remember.”

Clara steps out into the snow and is gone. The Doctor hears her TARDIS door close. He suddenly remembers something he always wanted to say to Clara – something so important regeneration can wait a few moments more! He starts for the door, determined to say what he needs to say. “Clara! Wait!”  


Stepping outside, The Doctor sees Clara’s diner TARDIS start to dematerialize. “Clara!” Too late. Exasperated, he falls back against the door of his TARDIS. “Again! Why must I always wait so long?”

From inside her TARDIS, Clara Oswald takes off her coat and starts to slowly undo the bowtie around her neck. She exhales deeply as she leaves the bowtie on the console. Tears stream down her face as she stars at the time rotor, twice silently muttering four words under her breath.

The Doctor looks at his hands. The regeneration energy has returned, stronger than before. No stopping it now. He sighs. “Let be.” He slips back into his TARDIS, humming, then singing to himself as he sits down beside the console “…that mighty dragon sadly slipped into his cave, oh…” **

The Doctor raises his hands as he is enveloped in golden regeneration energy. “Time for someone new.”

** Lyric from Puff The Magic Dragon, by Leonard Lipton and Peter Yarrow

**Author's Note:**

> “Superheated infusion of free radicals and tannin. Just the thing for rebooting the synapses.” Paraphrased ("rebooting" for "healing") from The Christmas Invasion, by Russell T Davies, Doctor Who Story 167, 2005.
> 
> ** Lyric from Puff The Magic Dragon, by Leonard Lipton and Peter Yarrow, 1963.


End file.
